We like to keep things as simple as possible and just focus on a few key details to make sure your hides arrive to our tannery in primo condition with the least effort from you.
You just need to make sure the hides are salted, put them in a plastic bag (if wet), then in a cardboard box, and ship them to us. If you live within driving distance, you can make an appointment to drop off your salted hides instead.
Please fill out an intake form and include it with your salted hides.
You don’t need to flesh them — we’ll take care of that in the tannery. Here’s the long version:
Tell whoever is skinning your hides that you will be sending them to a tannery so that they will put some effort into not knifing them up. It is difficult to get butchers to change their ways, but ideally they would just make the opening incisions, put their knife away, and pull the skin off by hand or with a winch. It is actually faster and cleaner for the meat to do it this way. So, if you are doing your own skinning, go read our skinning article. Skinning without knife cuts makes a huge difference!
Ask your butcher to salt your skins and save them for you. If they don’t do this themselves, then be prepared to do it yourself before sending them to our tannery.
Do-It-Yourself Instructions:
Buy a 50 pound bag of plain fine salt at the local feed store before harvest day so you have it on hand. They typically run about $10. We use Cargill’s Mix-N-Fine but any plain fine salt will do. Avoid mineral salts and rock salt. Fine salt penetrates much faster which prevents hair slip.
Get the skins as soon as you can, ideally within hours, but definitely same day. Open them up in the shade so that they cool down without drying out.
Then lay them flat on a pallet or piece of plywood. If there are any chunks of meat or fat that are thicker than a ¼ inch, pull them off with your hands (there usually aren’t).
Put a thin but solid layer of salt over the entire surface of the flesh side of the skin, starting from the center.
Push the salt all the way out and onto the edges. This is very easy to do correctly and should take about a minute per hide.
If doing multiple hides at once, you can put the next hide right on top of the first, salt it, and so on until you have a stack of salted hides. Let that salt soak in for 48 hours.
Want to watch the whole salting process? Here you go!
Use our UPS discount to send us your hides! Up to 75% off. It’s simple:
Two options for shipping your hides to our tannery:
To ship us your hides, we recommend using our UPS shipping discount via our Ship-Your-Hides Portal. You can also ship your hides to us using UPS, FedEX or USPS Ground without that discount:
Traditional Tanners
1700 E. Nevada St.
Ashland, OR 97520
Large quantities are best palletized and shipped LTL. We can help you with this — call us at (541) 592-3778. Locals are welcome to drive them to us at our tannery. Just give us a heads up.
Packaging
Fold or roll them up with the hair side out, then pack them in a strong plastic trash bag (contractor bags from the hardware store are ideal). After that, put them in a cardboard box keeping the total weight under 50 pounds per box — this saves you a lot on shipping.
Please fill out a tanning services intake form and include it with your salted hides.
Ashland, OR 97520 • customerservice@braintan.com